Le Mars girl buys pet oxygen masks for fire departments

Seven fire departments in northwest Iowa’s Plymouth County are now equipped with pet oxygen mask kits, thanks to the efforts of a Le Mars 7th grader.

Brooklyn Bockelmann raised nearly $1,000 within a month to purchase the kits. She collected much of the money by selling root beer floats at a middle school dance.

“I read a news article about two girls in California who purchased these per oxygen masks for their fire department and I really love animals, so I thought it would be a really cool idea if I did the same thing for our (fire department),” Bockelmann said. Each pet oxygen kit contains three masks of varying sizes.

“The large can be used on large dogs and small horses, the medium can be used on small dogs and cats, and the small can be used on gerbils, hamsters and parrots,” Bockelmann said. This week, Bockelmann delivered the pet oxygen mask kits to the Oyens, Hinton, Kingsley, Merrill, Remsen, Akron and Le Mars fire departments.

Her new goal is to raise enough money for every fire department in Iowa to be equipped with the kits.